Thursday, 27 August 2015

Jeremy Corbyn had a falling out with his wife over the schooling of their son. There were not any good comprehensive schools locally. His wife wanted to send their son to a grammar school- the same sort of school Jeremy went to. This was because all of the local comprehensives were deemed to be failing. Jeremy refused to send their son to a grammar school.It was against his principles. The couple spilt and the son went to grammar school. Jeremy had a clear conscience because although his son had gone to grammar school it had not happened on his watch.

No doubt Corbyn thinks his actions were principled. In fact they were completely pointless and in many ways unethical because:

1. His son went to grammar school anyway. Presumably Mrs Corbyn was a strong character and Jeremy probably realised she would get her way in the end one way or another.

2. Ruining your marriage over political point scoring is a really stupid thing to do. Of course if you really disagree with your spouse over politics generally then it is bad for a partnership. However, the Corbyn dispute was about one issue only. Most. Pimples would have reached a compromise.

3. Even if Jeremy's son had gone to the comprehensive it would have made no difference to the success or failure of the school. Corbyn would have been better to volunteer at the school or raise funds for it if he was concerned about it.

4. It is not appropriate to use your children as a political tool. The overriding concerns hound be their wellbeing. They don't have to conform to your politics or be an instrument for them. They need to find their own way in life and the role of the parent is to provide them with the best start that they can.

What this incident shows is that being right (in his pedantic mind) and sticking to his principles is more important to Corbyn than actually achieving a positive outcome. He would rather be right and fail than be a a little bit wrong but succeed.

This is probably why Corbyn (though a very intelligent man) is still just a back bencher after 30 years in politics.

This same spirit of principled martyrdom is also present in his followers. Corbyn is pure in spirit and deeds because his politics are largely untried and uncontaminated by contact with the real world. Even the fact that journalists are against him is seen as a virtue when any true politician would have been cultivating friendly journalists of years.

Winning isn't important to Corbyn or his followers. In fact if Corbyn did start achieving his manifesto it would involve a great loss for his fans. They would have to abandon their beliefs about a secret controlling world order and the idea hat 'establishment' won't allow anyone to challenge the consensus. When Corbyn is brought down it will prove their view of the world. If on the other hand Corbyn does start to make compromises and gain allies it will be taken as evidence that he has sold out and abandoned his principles.

So really there are only two ways forward for Jeremy- noble failure or ignoble success. I think I know which one he will choose.

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Are the values of the West better that the values of the
East? If you ask a Fox News correspondent then I am pretty sure you will get a
very quick reply that the west is morally superior in every way.

Personally, I can never really understand how any comparison
between the 'East' and the 'West' is meaningful. The term 'east' covers whole
continents and more countries and societies with many different social and
cultural groups. The west does too. A term like Muslim also covers vast numbers
of people in many countries and includes some of the poorest people in the
world as well as some of richest.

A few years ago Steven Hawking said that the people of
earth should be afraid if aliens ever discovering earth as there is a good
chance they could be hostile. I was at a friend's house and I asked her
daughter (who was about 11) whether she thought aliens would be friendly or
hostile. Rather than giving me a one word answer she went into a detailed
thesis about how there would probably be different factions on the alien planet
and different societies. Some would be friendly towards the earth and some
might not. Some might even see the earth as an ally for them against people on
their own planet whom they were in conflict with. I was really impressed. This
girl was able to show a degree of nuance and complexity absent from many day to
day conversations which I have with intelligent adults about cultural issues in
our world. She really understood that trying to make judgements about large
swathes of people as though they were a homogenous group was silly, especially
when we know nothing about them. This has not stopped commentators, who are
atheists, speaking about how they think Muslims will feel about the cartoons or
what they think their religion is about.

I know very little about Islam. My default assumption is
that anyone who is a Priest, Imam, or leader of any religion is a peaceful
person unless they give me evidence to the contrary. However, I would not
presume to tell people that Islam, Christianity or any other religion is a
religion of peace. Making such statements is presumptuous (since I do not have
permission to speak for them)and also a bit patronising or condescending. I would
be very irritated if I had to sit through English people on tv beaming sublimely
and telling viewers how peaceful and caring Scottish people were. Any
established religion has commentators much better qualified to make these
statements than I or any atheist politician can. Going forward from that –even
if we do have a Muslim scholar on tv, no individual theologian is going to be able to
speak for a whole faith. Even the Pope can only speak for Catholics, and even
then only practicing ones. Yet in the UK we have left wing atheists on websites
such as Counterfire presuming to speak for the world's Muslims.

Getting back to East v West bit. Let's suppose for a minute
we actually could agree on what constituted the east and what constituted the
west and that we could decide what we thought a better society would look like.
Which geographical and cultural block would win?

The answer, for me anyway, is that it ought not to matter as
I would want to make my own life choices wherever I lived. Not everyone can
take this for granted. I am thankful that I live in a time period and a place
where the answer doesn't matter. I can live my life, more or less as I want to.
I can take bits of philosophy for the Greeks, some mindfulness from Buddhism,
some dance music from the DJs of Istanbul, some Bollywood from India, some cool
comic books from France, some Cajun food from USA etc etc. This is not about
being rich, it is about being free. Free to make decisions for myself. Free to
make choices. Free to choose the ideas and philosophies I want to without
anyone telling me I am a non-believer, an apostate or a dissident. Free from
being imprisoned or executed or executed for having ideas that run counter to
the state.

This freedom is incredibly liberating but most of us take it
for granted. A number of years ago, before the Berlin Wall came down I had a
taxi ride in New York. The driver had escaped from a soviet bloc country.
Naively, I asked him about what he thought about the propaganda which western
countries pumped out about the Soviet Union and whether he thought it was an
unfair representation. He laughed asked me if I had ever heard of anyone who
had tried to escape in the other direction. He had a hard life as a taxi
driver, and he showed me his gun which he kept under his seat but he loved
being in control of his own life and living it as he wanted to.

Some say that freedom protects the privileges of the rich
and that poor people don't have freedom. This is nonsense. If poor people don't
have clean water then the compassionate thing to do is help them to drill a
well. You don't tell them that they shouldn't worry about water because clean
water is for the rich and unless you were very punitive you wouldn't make the
rich drink dirty water in the name of equality.

The most oppressed people in the world need freedom
the most. People like those detained in Guantanamo Bay with no rights and no
voice or the islanders who were evicted from their homes to make way for the
American Base at Diego Garcia. People in the UK whose lives are ruined by
practices such as Female Genital Mutilation or forced marriage. People in other
countries who are threatened with flogging or execution for blasphemy. People
who are punished for being victims of rape.People in this country who are abused
by gangs of men. These are the people who most need to be freed from coercion
and oppression and to have their voices heard. Telling them that freedom is a
luxury which protects the privileged of the rich or that free speech is a
custom of individualist western cultures is wrong. It is an acceptance of their
oppression. Many of the people I described are Muslims. They need people who
care about their plight to speak up for them. These people need to speak truth
to power. Sometimes that power is sometimes the USA or other rich countries. Sometimes it is people of their own faith or
people who claim to speak for their faith. They need UK citizens and UK
authorities who are willing to recognise and call out abuse and coercion, not
people who think all the evils of the world are rooted in capitalism or who are
afraid to question or risk offending cultural sensitivities

Many people come to the UK to flee religious, political or
cultural oppression. Some asylum seekers have been tortured because they have
dared to speak up against an oppressive regime. Some have had to flee because
they are gay or transgendered. These people are attracted to the UK because
they believe that this country will protect them and let them live their lives
the way they want to. We should welcome these people and make sure we can live
up to their expectations. We need to stand up to tyranny and bullying for their
sakes.

Central to all of our freedoms is freedom of speech and
freedom of expression. This is what allows us all to live our lives as we want
to and for many groups in society it has been hard fought and hard won. There
would be no freedom to be gay, for example, if our society had not stood up to
conservative Christians and repealed the laws on homosexuality. We would have
no real freedom of religion if we had not repealed laws against blasphemy. We
would not have any gender equality if brave women had not confronted patriarchy
and the social, political and religious institutions which supported it. In the
United States, women’s suffrage was opposed by Christian groups of a number of
denominations for many years. Religious conservatism
has often been in opposition to progressive causes and people. For many people
in the world it still is In some places women,
gay people and others face all forms of oppression including execution by
hanging or stoning with these practices often being justified by religion. It
is beyond me why people who would normally champion women’s rights are now
apologists for religious fundamentalist terrorists who would trample the rights of women given
half a chance.

One would think that nobody in this country would doubt
the value of freedom of speech and that people would not flinch from
defending against bullies and terrorists. Sadly, in the wake of the Charlie
Hebdo killings this has not been the case. A number of commentators of the UK
left including Will Self have questioned the centrality of free speech to our
society. I have seen words such as 'provocation' used to describe the actions
of satirists as though ridiculing an idea or a belief is a legitimate reason
for murder. Would the same people have thought that the parodies in Spitting
Image were justification for Mrs Thatcher sending in the SAS to the tv studios
to shoot the production team?

I have also have seen terms such as 'free speech
absolutists' and 'free speech fetishists' used to describe people who value the
exchange of ideas. This is shameful. Ridiculing religion or religious ideas is
not racism any more than it is racism to parody a political idea or movement.Charlie
Hebdoe operates within French laws, which are similar to ours. Thinking that
religious followers cannot cope with challenges to their beliefs, or shouldn't
be expected to do is patronising. Many Christians though the film The Life of
Brian was disrespectful and hateful towards Christianity and in Glasgow they
gave it an 18 rating. But nobody said it had to be banned and nobody was
murdered for producing it or acting in it.

Nick Clegg http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/13/nick-clegg-snoopers-charter-intelligence-surveillanceshowed a rare moment of courage and
backbone this week when he spoke up for free speech as a right without any
qualifications, buts or apologies. In a short statement he showed that he
really understood what free speech means. While others have condemned the
terrorists, few in the UK have said much about free speech and why it is
absolutely central to a diverse and multi- cultural society. Debate and the
sharing and challenging of ideas is what helps us to understand each other. It
allows people to express their culture or distance themselves from it, or find
and adopt new ideas. It is not something you can be fundamentalist about - it
is either something you have or something what he you don't have.

I haven't changed my view that multi-culturalism is good
thing either. However, we should not reintroduce blasphemy laws, either by
design or default. We certainly can't allow restrictions in free speech to be
defined and policed by terrorists.

Having said all that however, my view of some elements
of the British left and the British intelligencia is severely damaged. They
have abandoned the principles which are required for everything else they claim
to stand for. The left has lost its moral compass in its failure to stand uo to
terrorist bullies.

If you have freedom
to choose your own values, have your own thoughts and express your own ideas
then nobody needs to guarantee you any other freedoms. They all flow from these
basic central freedoms. Most importantly if you don't have free speech and free
expression the you can never truly have any other freedom.

And if you have any comments please make them here
especially of you found this article interesting and please share it on social
media. We only have so long on this planet. Use it wisely by standing up for values
that are worth standing up for.